1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved induction furnace for heating or re-heating flat products of steel industry, particularly to re-establish a homogeneous temperature, suitable to rolling thin steel slabs.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known from the Italian patent application No. 20534 A/89, corresponding to the International publication WO 90/14742, an induction furnace comprising an array of coils, which are separately fed by one or more frequency converters and crossed in succession by the strip being supported and caused to move forward by pairs of rollers between each coil and the subsequent one, wherein flux concentrator devices are provided, mounted in pairs at the ends of each inductor, at least on an upper or lower side, with respect to the plane defined by the strip itself.
Although this solution gives best results, as it allows for the first time to exploit satisfactorily the induction heating in connection with longitudinal flat products, whereas the magnetic flux was previously mainly directed such as to cross transversely the strip in the thickness direction, with poor results but for the thermal treatment of the edges only, however some inconveniences have been experienced, mainly due to the great leakage of magnetic flux which, as it closes at the outside of the strip, crosses the structural metal parts of the apparatus, thus causing an undue heating thereof in spite of the presence of lateral flux concentrators, possibly movable.
Previously, with longer inductors (along the longitudinal size of the product to be heated), as it was possible for thicker products, the possible utilization of concentrators would be useless, since the little improvement in the efficiency and reduction of leakage would not be worth in comparison with the increase of costs. With a short inductor, as necessarily adopted in connection with flat products such as thin slabs, also the presence of lateral flux concentrators according to the above-mentioned previous patent does not solve the problem of flux leakage and leads to relatively low efficiencies, e.g. of 0.6 or less, when considering the ratio between power entering the flat product to be heated, including losses due e.g. to radiation, and supplied active power.
As a matter of fact, the longitudinal size of coils cannot be made too great, since to keep a reduced value of the space between two subsequent coils, above which the thin product could not be fed forward in a suitable way, a reduced diameter of the rollers would result, which is to be avoided in order not to have a too small bending radius, with consequent stumbling of the flat product and problems of heat transmission. An attempt was then made to modify the mechanical parts to overcome the drawbacks caused by the flux leakage. A solution of this type requires providing rollers coated with refractory material, to prevent sparkling and consequent "dotting" on the strip, and/or making not solid rollers, but formed of isolated sectors to hinder the generation of eddy currents, or finally mounting the rollers on separate pillars, such as of concrete. This way a structure would be obtained not only more complex and costly, but also less solid and compact, certainly not so suitable to this type of processing and steel industry environment.